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Annual Report 2014-2015

Report Year

2014-2015

International Environment Forum

Annual Report

August 2014 to February 2015

The 19th Annual Report of the International Environment Forum summarizes
the events and activities for the six months from August 2014 to February
2015 between two annual conferences. The report was presented at the 19th
General Assembly of the IEF in Paris, France on 11 March 2015.

18th ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE
INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENT FORUM

The 18th Annual Conference of the International Environment Forum (IEF)
was held in partnership with the Association for Baha’i Studies (ABS) -
North America at its 2014 Conference on 7-10 August in Toronto, Canada.
This was the second time that IEF has partnered with ABS after a
successful collaboration in Washington, D.C. in 2009. The conferences of
the Association for Baha'i Studies - North America attract over a thousand
people, making them ideal to multiply the impact of what IEF can
contribute.

The 2014 ABS conference theme was "Scholarship and the Life of Society",
and the conference experimented with new formats in response to guidance
encouraging the ABS to reflect on how to maintain coherence with the new
processes at work in the Baha'i community. The IEF contributions to the
conference included the following, described in more detail in the
conference report at https://iefworld.org/conf18.

• IEF Board member Peter Adriance and IEF President Arthur Dahl
facilitated a subject area consultation on Environmental Studies

• IEF member Elizabeth Bowen and Arthur Dahl participated in a plenary
panel session with the theme ‘Exploring the Natural and Life Sciences’.
Elizabeth Bowen shared perspectives around ‘Let Your Vision be
World-Embracing’ – Why Health Sciences and Bioethics? and Arthur Dahl
presented on ‘Natural Sciences and Society’

• Peter Adriance chaired an IEF breakout session which was opened by a
keynote presentation by Arthur Dahl on ‘Addressing Sustainability
Challenges: A Framework for Material and Spiritual Transformation’.

• IEF members Arthur Dahl, Peter Adriance, Christine Muller then
participated in a panel discussion on ‘Contributing to sustainability
discourse and action’ with presentations on ‘Introducing Baha’i
Principles to United Nations Dialogues and Conferences’, ‘Approaches to
Sustainable Development Issues and Climate Change in the American Baha’i
Community’ and ‘The Wilmette Institute Course on Climate Change – an
Impetus for Service and Action’.

18th IEF GENERAL ASSEMBLY

The 18th IEF General Assembly was held during the conference in Toronto
on 9 August 2014. Nine IEF members and four visitors engaged in the
discussions which included consultations on the progress as described in
the 2013-14 Annual Report and on future activities and priorities for the
coming year. In the lead up to the 2014 conference, IEF members had been
invited to provide feedback to the Board on the functioning of the IEF via
a questionnaire which was discussed briefly. Following a recommendation in
the Universal House of Justice's letter of 24 July 2013 concerning the
Association for Baha'i Studies - North America that smaller meetings among
experts on more focused topics would be useful, a recommendation was made
that the IEF should consider hosting online consultations on specific
areas of interest.

IEF GOVERNING BOARD

The IEF Governing Board elected Arthur Dahl as President and Emily Firth
as General Secretary. The Board held one electronic meeting and one face
to face teleconference meeting during the six months of this report and
has consulted on a variety of topics related to international and national
events and dialogue on developments related to climate change and
sustainability. The Board has approved 12 new membership applications
since August 2014.

Following recent Board consultations on ways to ensure the ongoing
effectiveness of the IEF, the Board has invited a select group of IEF
members to form a task force to review the IEF and make recommendations
for its future development. It is expected that the taskforce will report
back to the Board by mid 2015. The Board continues to welcome feedback and
suggestions from all members on the functioning of the IEF to maintain our
valuable contribution to the important public discourse on the environment
and sustainability at global, national ands local levels.

19th IEF ANNUAL CONFERENCE – 10-11 March
2015

The 19th IEF Annual Conference will be held in association with the
international conference of the Partnership for Education and Research
about Responsible Living (PERL) at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, France on
10-11 March 2015. The conference theme is ‘A Decade of Responsible
Living: Preparing, Engaging, Responding and
Learning about Responsible Lifestyles’.

As part of its contribution to the conference, the IEF will be organizing
a panel on ethical transformation and education for service at the
individual, community and institutional levels, with other papers
presented on values-based indicators in education and the toolkits that
IEF has contributed to developing. The IEF General Assembly will also be
held during the conference.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SUSTAINABLE
DEVELOPMENT GOALS (SDGs)

In early January, the IEF submitted an official response to the UN
Secretary-General’s Synthesis Report on the Post-2015 Agenda ‘The Road
to Dignity by 2030: Ending Poverty, Transforming All Lives and
Protecting the Planet’. The IEF response commended the
Secretary-General’s focus on youth, highlighted the importance of
implementing a bottom-up process without relying solely on efforts of
governments, and discussed the role of education particularly in terms of
mobilizing youth whose actions are guided by moral and ethical principles.
Specific reference was made to the efforts of PERL. The IEF response also
called for the UN to reach beyond its traditional constituency of
organizations and engage more with civil society, the media, youth and
grassroots communities to build momentum for the necessary transition to a
just and sustainable society. The full IEF response is available at
https://iefworld.org/node/714.

In late January, the IEF responded to an invitation of the Sustainable
Development Solutions Network (SDSN) to comment on the revised draft
report of ‘Indicators and a Monitoring Framework for Sustainable
Development Goals: Launching a data revolution for the SDGs’. The
IEF response recommended that in order to improve communication and
buy-in, a small selection of indicators be identified that can be
calculated and used in local communities and provided specific examples of
indicators that could be used. Specific mention was made of IEF’s
involvement in EU-funded research on values-based indicators of education
for sustainable development and their application in secondary schools
through the Partnership for Education and Research about Responsible
Living.

OTHER IEF PARTNERSHIPS AND INTERNATIONAL
ACTIVITIES

Partnership for Education and research about
Responsible Living (PERL)

The IEF continues to be actively engaged with the Partnership for
Education and Research about Responsible Living (PERL). PERL is an
international network of over 150 partners around the world including
universities, educational organizations and international agencies. PERL
is coordinated by IEF board member Prof. Victoria Thoresen.

IEF has been leading the PERL workgroup to prepare toolkits on
values-based activities and indicators for use in schools. The first
editions of three toolkits are now available: ‘Measuring What Matters –
Values-based Indicators’, ‘Discovering What Matters – A journey
of thinking and feeling’, and ‘Growing a Shared Vision – A
toolkit for schools’. The toolkits have been printed and distributed
to 60 countries. More information is available at
https://iefworld.org/node/665.

ebbf

Our partnership with ebbf – Ethical Business Building the Future, the
Baha'i-inspired forum for ethics in business, continues in support of its
core value of sustainable development. IEF President Arthur Dahl, and
Board member Wendi Momen are on the ebbf Governing Board, and several
other members are active in both organizations.

IEF INVOLVEMENT IN COURSES

In January and February, a five-week free internet course ‘Pathways to
climate change adaptation: the case of Small Island Developing States’
was offered by the University of Geneva in collaboration with the United
Nations Environment Programme. As one of the faculty, IEF President Arthur
Dahl prepared a module of eight lectures on the special problems of Small
Island Developing States.

The IEF continues to co-sponsor the University of Geneva Certificate
of Advanced Studies in Sustainable Development, which is offered
each year from October to June. Arthur Dahl is a member of the scientific
committee and teaches in three modules. From October 2015 the course will
be reorganized into a shorter 10 unit course focused on systems thinking
and the ethical dimension, in complement to other more specialized courses
now being offered.

The Wilmette Institute on-line course on Climate Change led by
IEF member Christine Muller and based on the IEF interfaith course on
scientific and spiritual dimensions of climate change is offered twice a
year in March-May and September-November 2014. IEF members serve as
faculty for the course. A report was shared by IEF member Sue Blythe in
the January 2015 issue of the LEAVES newsletter on the development
of an interfaith climate group in Gainesville, Florida USA. This group was
inspired through completion of the course in 2013. Over the past two years
its members have been engaging people of various religious traditions in
education, inspiration and action for a sustainable world.

IEF member Kadima Mpoyi Long’sha of Kanaga in the Democratic Republic of
Congo organized a training course on Sustainable Development and
Climate Change in late December and early January. The course was
based on IEF materials from the website and attracted over 30
participants.

IEF MEMBER PARTICIPATION IN OTHER EVENTS

On Sunday 21 September, the largest People's March on Climate Change
in history was organized in New York City, with about 400,000 people
participating, including IEF members Peter Adriance, Representative for
Sustainable Development for the US Baha’i Office of Public Affairs, and
Christine Muller, who wrote the IEF course on climate change, and is lead
faculty for the Wilmette Institute course on climate change. Similar, if
smaller marches were organized in 2,600 other places around the world,
involving at least another 300,000 people. Arthur Dahl marched with
hundreds of others in Geneva, Switzerland.

European Center for Peace and Development
(ECPD)

IEF President Arthur Dahl participated in the 10th ECPD International
Conference on National Reconciliation, Religious Tolerance and Human
Security in the Balkans in October in Belgrade, Serbia. The conference was
followed by the Second ECPD Youth Forum, where Arthur Dahl chaired a
session and presented a paper on "Hope for Balkan Youth in the
Contemporary World Reality" available on the IEF web site at
https://iefworld.org/ddahl14g .

In November, IEF President Arthur Dahl attended a presentation on the
most important findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC)’s Fifth Assessment Report. A commentary provided by
Arthur Dahl on this presentation and the latest findings is available at
https://iefworld.org/node/705.

IEF Board members Peter Adriance and Victoria Thoresen participated in
the World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development
(ESD) in November in Nagoya, Japan. More than 1,000 participants gathered
for the three-day conference under the theme “Learning Today for a
Sustainable Future.” The Action Plan is a follow up to the UN Decade of
ESD, and will generate and scale up ESD actions in each of five priority
areas of policy support, whole–institution approaches, educators, youth,
and local communities.

IEF Board member Victoria Thoresen is a member of the Multi-stakeholder
Advisory Committee for the 10 Year Framework of Programmes for
Sustainable Production and Consumption.

PUBLICATIONS AND PAPERS BY IEF MEMBERS

Two academic books with contributions by IEF members were published in
November 2014.

"Transitions to Sustainability", edited by François Mancebo
and Ignacy Sachs (Dordrecht: Springer, 2014), explores the challenges of
putting sustainability into practice, especially in terms of governance
and a new social contract. A number of chapters were written by IEF
members:
• Jon Marco Church of the University of Reims on "Norms, Rules and
Sustainable Planning: Who Said What About Norms"
• IEF President Arthur Dahl on "Putting the Individual at the Center of
Development: Indicators of Well-Being for a New Social Contract".
• IEF Board member Sylvia Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen of Wageningen University on
"The Legitimation of Global Energy Governance: A Normative Exploration".

November also saw the publication of IEF member Paul Hanley’s book ‘Eleven’
which tackles the question of how we can manage the 11 billion population
now projected for 2100. The recording of a webinar given by Paul Hanley in
Washington DC on 1 February is available at
https://franciscanaction.adobeconnect.com/p1bjncqk0hr/. Arthur Dahl wrote
and posted a book review of Eleven on the IEF website at
https://iefworld.org/node/708.

IEF NEWSLETTER AND WEBSITE

IEF web site

The IEF web site (https://iefworld.org) continues to report on IEF events
and statements, provides an on-line version of LEAVES, the IEF newsletter,
and includes blogs, book reviews and papers by IEF members. It includes
several recent reports on United Nations efforts to prepare a post-2015
agenda and to respond to climate change, including Small Island Developing
States, Sustainable Development Goals and indicators, and the
Secretary-General’s synthesis report “The Road to Dignity by 2030: Ending
Poverty, Transforming All Lives and Protecting the Planet”

LEAVES newsletter

The newsletter team consisting of members Cynthia Diessner, Sarah
Richards and Susie Howard continues to make invaluable contributions to
the IEF by preparing and distributing the LEAVES newsletter each month.
The newsletter shares news of IEF activities and other significant events
of interest to IEF members. Contributions from members are always welcome.

CONCLUSIONS

In the relatively short time covered by this Annual Report, due to the
dates of our 2014 and 2015 conferences, the IEF and its members have
continued to be active in the key environmental and sustainability issues
on the international agenda, contributing Baha'i-inspired perspectives
when appropriate. The Peoples' Climate Marches in September showed that
there is increasing public interest in acting to address the challenges
the world faces. 2015 will be a critical year for the world community,
with a major UN meeting on financing for development in July, a summit at
the UN in New York in September to agree on the Sustainable Development
Goals for every nation, and the UN Climate Conference in Paris in
December, which must agree on global action to reverse climate change
before it is too late to prevent significant human and environmental
impact. In addition to government action, the people of the world should
mobilize and begin to transform their own communities and neighbourhoods.
The need to encourage a transition to a more sustainable world society has
never been greater, and becomes more urgent with every passing day. The
strength of the IEF is in its membership combining scientific and ethical
perspectives, and including members with significant involvement in the
processes and discourses under way, and those bringing change in their own
local communities. We encourage all of our members to explore what they
can do to be agents of change, and to help IEF to reach out to others who
can contribute to catalyzing that change.